If you are not aware, the Boy Scouts of America discontinued the beekeeping merit badge a few years back. There is now a young scout named Christopher Stowell who is trying to get it reinstated. With the help of ndvan, who is a member here and a neighbor of Chris Stowell, I have set up this forum to help organize our effort to make this happen. We beekeepers are key to making this happen, and we stand to benefit greatly from this. We are all aware that there is not enough youth involvement in beekeeping and that is detrimental to our future. Beekeeping has made the news lately, mainly due to CCD, and because of this we are seeing a great increase in hobbyist beekeepers. This is a good thing because a large majority of hobbyist gave up after loosing their hives to varroa. With the great advancements in technology, specifically the internet, forums like this have become a great resource for new beekeepers to learn and get mentoring. We have many great members on this forum that freely give their time and advice to help out beginners, now we need to take this effort outside the beekeeping community to help this young scout get beekeeping back into the Boy Scouts, and in turn get more youth into the beekeeping community. This is an excellent opportunity for us and we can't let it pass by.

Here is what needs to be done, and everyone that is reading this can play a part. I have attached 4 files at the bottom of this post. They are PDFs, so everyone can print them out.

a concerns of the BSA is that when the beekeeping merit badge was discontinued, one of the reasons was the lack of merit badge councilors. For those that aren't familiar with how the Boy Scout merit badges work, when a scout decides he wants to earn a merit badge, he must first contact a merit badge councilor for the particular badge he is interested in. This councilor acts as a mentor and explains the requirements of the merit badge and will ultimately be the one that signs off when the requirements are met. Now it is not a hand holding situation, the scout needs to take the initiative to make things happen and it is his responsibility to demonstrate to the councilor that the requirements are met. The councilor is there for support and guidance. So for the BSA to reinstate the beekeeping badge, they want to be assured that there will be ample councilors available.

There are a couple of ways to do this. One is to get your local beekeeping club to commit to support this effort. I'm asking everyone to print out the ClubSupport.pdf and take it to your next club meeting and ask them to vote on it.

You can also print out the BeekeeperSupport.pdf and pledge to personally be a merit badge council when the beekeeping merit badge gets reinstated. Get your friends who are beekeepers to do the same.

Another concern of the BSA is scout interest. They do not want to spend the effort and resources if there are not scouts that would take advantage of it. If you are involved in scouting, please do as much as you can to find the scouts in your area that would be interested and get them to sign the scout interest petition. I will be approaching my council at the next roundtable to get as many troops in my district involved as possible. If you are not involved in scouting, but know someone who is please pass the info on to them. Or, if you really want to get involved, contact your local council and act as a liaison for this effort. The scout interest petition is ScoutPetition.pdf

The final file, GeneralPetiton.pdf is an effort to show general support for reinstating the Beekeeping merit badge. Print it out and get all your friends, family, and colleagues to sign it.

Christoper's goal is to present to the BSA on July 15, 2010. So please keep this in mind and make sure you allow for postal delivery and please try to give Christopher some time to get things in order before the 15th.

Please use this forum to share ideas and let us know what you have done. I will be starting a few more threads, so keep a watch out for them.

One final thought. We need more youth involvement in beekeeping, and the BSA is not the only way to get it. Right now there is a young man trying to get the BSA to help get youth involved. We need to help him, but there is no reason our efforts need to be limited to the BSA. We should be willing, I know I am, to support any youth organization that is interested in beekeeping. But at this point, Christopher has been the first to step up and we need to focus all our efforts here until others show interest.

« Last Edit: April 23, 2010, 04:41:24 PM by Robo »

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"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison

No sweat... im debating on sending out flyers up here in Colorado the plight of the bees are on the forfront of of everybody so I bet it will really help. After we get this rockin for the boys my 2 daughters are wondering why they cant help teach the boys not run from the evil bugs... LOL.

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To bee or not to bee that is the question I wake up to answer that every morning...

For those that have downloaded the forms, there is an error. Namely, the address is wrong. The house number should be 17596. The Stowell's had not noticed, because the postal lady was delivering the mail anyway. However, they are getting a new postal person who won't deliver mail at all if there is a problem with the address. I have corrected the forms, so either manually correct the address on your forms or download the new version.

Thanks everyone.....

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"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison

Please e-mail BSA and let them know you are willing to be a mentor. Many of us signed the petition and wrote letters stating we would make ourselves available to teach boy scouts about the honey bees. Now is the time to contact BSA . They are requesting that we e-mail them at: merit.badge@scouting.org put Honey Bees in the heading

Just write a few words letting them know you are willing to mentor. Give them a way to contact you and let them know the areas of your state/county you are willing to mentor in.

BSA had added Bee keeping to 8 merit badges now. One is required to earn Eagle Rank. 100,000 boys will be learning about bee keeping each year through BSA merit badges as of 2015 and some merit badges will be in effect as of 2012. They are going to need our help to teach all these boys. Thank you.Christopher

Send in e-mail to bee a mentor for the BSA beekeeping merit badge hope I can help out.

BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

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"Tell me and I'll forget,show me and I may remember,involve me and I'll understand" Chinese Proverb

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways." John F. KennedyFranklin County Beekeepers Association MA. http://www.franklinmabeekeepers.org/

As a result of this effort, I have been working with the Eastern NC Council of the BSA in setting up an apiary in Blounts Creek at the Eco Lodge and Nature Center, Camp Bonner. We've worked with the Boy Scouts, teaching them to assemble hives, install packages, introduce queens, and maintain their new hives. All area bee suppliers made generous donations of supplies and bees, and we held a grand opening/ribbon cutting which was a huge success. This coming Saturday, we will be conducting a program for the NCSU Entomological students which will cover the eusocial insects: ants, termites and honey bees, and will be going into the hives and having a subsequent question and answer period.

It is my understanding the the beekeeping merit badge is dead in the water; that it would cost too much money to reinstate; however there is not an insect studies/ecological merit badge under which beekeeping falls. Not perfect, but I have no ideas how to change their minds. For further info and for pics, go to Crystal Coast Beekeepers website http://ccba.webng.com/

I am the Scoutmaster for Troop 5 in Louisville Mississippi and I am new to this forum. I am a hobbyist beekeeper and I am passionate about having this reinstated. I have contacted the Department of Agriculture in about half the states to request letters of support for this cause. I have received support letters from Texas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Washington. I have sent requests to many more but have not received responses at this time. I have been working at this for about 6 months now and decided to go ahead and sent a letter to the Merit Badge Council along with the letters of support. I mailed it yesterday so we will see.

What I would like to see personally are troop apiaries established with grants from the department of agriculture of each state. They do have to fully fund them but help financially in some way to help the troops buy suits, tools and hives. The apiaries do not have to be large. Just 4 hives or so would be sufficient to teach the boys, provide polination to an area that is void and also provide honey for the boys to sell for fundraising.

Many counties in states across the country have multiple troops and I am sure that some have none but could you imagine if you just had 6 hives or better scattered across each county that do not exist now? I know that is a high bar to set. I believe there is an opportunity going unseized with the scouting program. Not all boys will want to be commercial beekeepers and and not all will want to keep bees as a hobby in the future but we have the opportunity to educate hundreds of thousands of boys on the importance of these amazing and vital little insects.

I will keep you posted as to the response from the council. If any of you want the contact info:

Robo,I see Christopher met his deadline on the 15th of April, but that the National BSA Said they would think about it.... which means no nothing will change. What is happening to date? I have seen no more on its status in BSA or any other locations.Please update us on its status.NewBee,Randy